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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'A new floor',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/10/12.jpg" alt="The house has been painted white!" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			I&apos;ve been specifically asked (threatened, really) by the school not to involve people outside the school in my coursework.
			For that reason, I can&apos;t discus this topic with a live person as the discussion topic recommends.
			However, I suffer from obesity myself, which is listed as one of the main chronic illnesses by the textbook, so I&apos;ll talk about my own experiences instead of the experiences of someone else.
		</p>
		<p>
			I can&apos;t really remember the beginning of my obesity; it must have been in early childhood.
			I grew up in a pretty toxic home though, so there&apos;s a good chance there was a psychological trigger to my overeating.
			My parents were always fighting, and our mother was always yelling at us children.
			We were always berated for having different thoughts, opinions, and ideals than our mother, and that led to a big part of my childhood depression.
			Psychologically, I was a very broken person, and I even tried committing suicide on multiple occasions.
			I always chickened out though, likely due to just how weak and broken I was back then.
			Later in life, when I finally started to rise from the ashes, my mother berated me for my new good-for-the-planet dietary habits.
			To try to force me to eat like her, she would complain about the smell of anything she didn&apos;t feel like eating herself, and eventually forbid such foods in her home.
			I couldn&apos;t eat what she tended to eat, as it was outside my conscientious dietary restrictions, but I also couldn&apos;t eat the nutritious food I would otherwise be able to eat, because it wasn&apos;t allowed in the house.
			I had long been obese at this point, but now, I had to survive on junk food such as potato chips and hash browns, which were within the small overlap of what she allowed in the house and what was allowed by my new diet.
			My obesity, needless to say, increased substantially.
			I grew weaker too, in both body and mind, due to the poor diet.
		</p>
		<p>
			Once a body is used to a diet, it tends to crave foods from that diet.
			Even once I moved out, I tended to eat a lot of junk food, though I was also able to eat foods in addition to that which helped me regain my strength.
			I&apos;d never felt secure in my own home before, as my mother was always threatening to kick me out.
			When I moved out, every little sound made me nervous - I kept thinking my mother was there.
			Eventually, I was able to relax and feel safe.
			It opened up a new side of me.
			I suspect it had to do with the hierarchy of needs.
			Social needs, such as sexual attraction and wanting to be perceived a certain way, aren&apos;t likely to be felt until baser needs, such as the need for the sense of security, are met.
			I learned that I&apos;m a queer - an non-binary individual, to be more specific - which explained a lot about my childhood.
			Male brains are structurally different from female brains, which is why males and females act and think so differently.
			Queers, however, have brains that mix male and female brain characteristics.
			I learned that I&apos;m neither fully man nor fully woman.
		</p>
		<p>
			At this point, one of my main concerns is that I&apos;m perceived as something I&apos;m not.
			Mainly, this is due to my body.
			It doesn&apos;t help that I&apos;m so fat, ans fat accumulates differently on male and female bodies.
			My fat accentuates my sex, even though my sex doesn&apos;t match my gender.
			Yet most people don&apos;t understand the difference between sex and gender.
			So the driving motivation behind trying to lose weight is my need to look more androgynous.
			I&apos;ve even had my name legally changed.
			&quot;Alex&quot; is a great androgynous name, being short for at least one masculine name, at least four feminine names, and at least one gender-neutral name.
			I&apos;d always hated my gendered birth name anyway, though I didn&apos;t realise why when I was a child.
			Having a proper name that I actually resonate with has greatly boosted my confidence.
		</p>
		<p>
			Anyway, my years of obesity are coming to a close.
			I&apos;ve been on a strict diet, as of late.
			Mostly, I eat a lot of fibre, hoping it&apos;ll pass back out of me, but I also eat a lot of protein, whole grains, ans vitamin C.
			With greasy foods having been off the menu for quite a while, I&apos;ve found my cravings for them have greatly diminished.
			My body just isn&apos;t used to them any more and doesn&apos;t want them as badly.
			
			I still enjoy some fattening foods though, such as apple pie.
			Oh, well.
			I guess I won&apos;t have a perfect diet.
			I can bend down now without winding myself now though.
			It used to be that when I&apos;d sit down and tie my shoes, my legs would press my fat into my lungs and leave me out of breath.
			I&apos;m still too fat, but I&apos;m not quite that fat any more.
			A fold mark between my breasts and gut used to be hidden in my fat rolls too, but now it&apos;s completely visible.
			I&apos;m getting better!
			(I just noticed as I&apos;m writing this that that fold mark is vanishing, too.
			I&apos;d assumed it was a permanent scar, like the fold marks on your palms caused by how often you bend your hands.)
			And over the past couple weeks or so, I&apos;ve noticed that my rings are too loose.
			Fat loss isn&apos;t focussed right where I&apos;d like it to be, so my fingers are shrinking now that I&apos;ve lost a substantial amount of fat.
			Just today, I noticed that my double chin is mostly gone as well.
			Each of these four signs, as they first showed up, has increased my will to keep trying.
			They show me that I do have the strength to fix my overweight body.
			Psychologically, my former sense of helplessness is being proved inaccurate.
		</p>
		<p>
			People say exercise is as important as diet, but I don&apos;t have the space or the time for much of that.
			I used to put my feet under the couch and do sit-ups, but I&apos;ve had to give up my living room to my mother, who has invited herself to use my living room for storage while she&apos;s in the process of moving.
			It&apos;s annoying not having a place to sit besides my bed, but it&apos;s tolerable for now.
			I don&apos;t have time to hit up a gym, either.
			Censorship from the school keeps me a bit drained - it takes a major toll on me psychologically - so coursework takes me a lot longer than it used to.
			I used to have everything done usually in the first half of the week!
			Now I often barely meet deadlines.
			Making time to hit up a gym <strong>*so*</strong> isn&apos;t happening for a couple more years, at least.
			I&apos;ve always walked or biked everywhere I go though.
			I&apos;ve never owned a motor vehicle, so I do get a little exercise in on my commute to and from work.
			I&apos;ve also started attending weekly $a[LUG] meetings, partly for exercise (as I have to bike to the next town over to reach the meeting location) and partly to try to make friends.
			That&apos;s got to help somewhat too.
		</p>
		<p>
			Admittedly, other psychological factors have been presenting roadblocks as well.
			At one point, I was under so much stress that I snapped, and ate an entire pie that I had in the freezer from before I&apos;d begun my diet.
			This would be an example of emotional eating, as described by the textbook (Ogden, 2017).
			I figure that sort of thing can only happen so many times though.
			There&apos;s not a whole lot of bad food left in my apartment; that was my only pie, for example.
			If I snap again, I won&apos;t be eating another pie, that&apos;s for sure.
			When I have the strength to go shopping (which is usually), I definitely have the strength not to buy pies.
		</p>
		<p>
			Ogden says that people suffering from obesity often suffer from <q cite="https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/326138/mod_book/chapter/166764/Ogden-The_psychology_of_health_and_illness.pdf">low self-esteem, anxiety, low mood, a general lack of confidence ... depression, ... and high levels of body dissatisfaction</q> (Ogden, 2017), which I can say from experience is true.
			However, these are also some of the <strong>*causes*</strong> of obesity.
			When the causes match the symptoms, you end up with a bad downward spiral that&apos;s difficult to recover from.
		</p>
		<p>
			Our other reading assignment was about how gratitude seems to reduce depression (Sirois &amp; Wood, 2017), which seems oddly specific.
			We&apos;re asked to tie both of our reading assignments into our discussion post, but I&apos;m not really sure how to tie that one in.
			When I was depressed, my situation was so bad that there was nothing to really be grateful for.
			I literally wanted to die on many occasions.
			It&apos;s only once I reached a better situation that my depression improved, and even then, I don&apos;t have any help, so there&apos;s no one to be grateful <strong>*to*</strong>.
			I&apos;m unfortunately pretty alone for the time being, and have no support network whatsoever.
			I&apos;m working to get into an even better situation, which should allow be to build a support network, but that won&apos;t be for a while now.
			While I don&apos;t question that gratitude can be an effective treatment, but it&apos;s not one I used and only really works when you have someone supporting you that you can feel grateful to.
			I&apos;m grateful to people such as my dentist, I guess, for removing my infected teeth that were causing me some physiological symptoms, but I wasn&apos;t even able to see a dentist until I&apos;d escaped and my depression had cleared up.
		</p>
		<p>
			What do you think could be done to lessen the number of cases of chronic illness?
		</p>
		<div class="APA_references">
			<h3>References:</h3>
			<p>
				Ogden, J. (2017). The Psychology of Health and Illness: An Open Access Course. Retrieved from <a href="https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/326138/mod_book/chapter/166764/Ogden-The_psychology_of_health_and_illness.pdf"><code>https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/326138/mod_book/chapter/166764/Ogden-The_psychology_of_health_and_illness.pdf</code></a>
			</p>
			<p>
				Sirois, F. M., &amp; Wood, A. M. (2017). Gratitude uniquely predicts lower depression in chronic illness populations: A longitudinal study of inflammatory bowel disease and arthritis. Health Psychology, 36(2), 122. Retrieved from <a href="https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/326164/mod_book/chapter/166805/U6%20Gratitude%20Permission%20OK.pdf"><code>https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/326164/mod_book/chapter/166805/U6%20Gratitude%20Permission%20OK.pdf</code></a>
			</p>
		</div>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="floor">
	<h2>New floor</h2>
	<p>
		Wow.
		I&apos;m in shock.
		We&apos;re actually getting a new floor where I work.
		The owner came in months ago and ripped out our tiles; then just left the missing floor as it was.
		We&apos;ve been unable to mop, and being a food-service establishment with bits of food ending up everywhere, it&apos;s been completely unsanitary.
		I thought I&apos;d leave this place before the new tiles were ever installed with how long that&apos;d been put off already.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="salesperson">
	<h2>Salesperson</h2>
	<p>
		We&apos;re training a newbie in preparation for them to take over as manager of one of the other stores of our franchise.
		There have been an obnoxious number of flies in the back as of late, and I&apos;d finally had it with them, so I came to the front lobby to eat the sandwich I&apos;d brought for lunch.
		We&apos;ve got practically no insects up front.
		If we had as many as in the back, we&apos;d lose a lot of business.
		That&apos;s what it all comes down to.
		The franchise owner and the head manager don&apos;t care much about sanitation, but they do care about loss of money.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, as I sat in the corner of the lobby, I watched and listened as the trainee served customers.
		They were quite a smooth talker in their up-selling.
		Once the customers had left, I told them they were quite the salesperson.
		After talking with them a bit, they attributed it to their lineage.
		One of their parents is a car salesperson.
		On the other side of their genetics, one of their grandparents is a preacher.
		I&apos;m not sure if that&apos;s genetics or the way they were raised, but it certainly shows.
		I&apos;ve never seen anyone pushing pizzas with such ... I don&apos;t even know how to describe it.
		I guess it&apos;s a combination of subtlety, pretending you&apos;re just looking out for the customer, and charisma, but also some flair.
		It&apos;s odd to combine subtlety and flair, but I swear this person did that.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
